Have you ever unexpectedly found yourself off-roading through the desert… in the middle of the night… with a congressional candidate… in the Middle East? Well, I have. Let me rewind a little bit and give you some of the back story that led up to this potentially deadly, yet unforgettable event.
The year was 2009. I was living in southwest Virginia and had been working with my business partner at the time, Greg Gross, for a couple years to establish a new media company in the region. We were attending a conference or workshop for startup businesses at Highlands Community College in Abingdon, VA. I think I slipped out early, but Greg stuck around and ended up meeting a man named Jeremiah Heaton. Jeremiah is an entrepreneur with a ton of creative ideas, who was looking for a couple of someones crazy enough to join him on an adventure of a life time. He wanted us to produce a documentary about his run for Congress. Yes, Congress….. the big one in Washington D.C.
Who is Jeremiah Heaton? You may have heard his name in the news a few years ago. When his daughter asked if she could become a princess one day, he was the guy that searched the globe and found the last piece of unclaimed land in the entire world – a small stripe of land between Egypt and Sudan – Bir Tawil. He then got on a plane and flew to Africa, planted a flag in the ground, and claimed the land as his own country – the Kingdom of North Sudan.
The Jeremiah I knew back then was just as much of an out-of-the-box thinker as King Jeremiah. If he was going to do something, he was going to do it big. So when he decided to run for Congress in the 9th district of Virginia, he took the same approach to announcing his intentions to run for office. He wanted to be the only congressional candidate in US history to announce their candidacy from a foreign country. Initially, he had his heart set on visiting the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan and making his speech there. But the military thought it was unsafe to have civilians in either of those precarious regions. Dubai was the next best thing.
Dubai is a city in the country of The United Arab Emirates. Technically, it is an emirate. It is known to many as a playground for the rich and famous. Developers have poured tons of money into the region to help establish that reputation. They built modern marvels like the Burj Al Arab, a 5 star hotel designed to look like the sail from a sailboat. Other visionaries literally reshaped the earth by creating new land in Persian Gulf for the Man-made Islands. Each individual island features a private home or vacation resort. Collectively the islands form intricate patterns of palm trees, constellations of stars, the seven continents of the globe, that can be seen from space. Dubai is also home to two of the largest shopping malls in the world – the Dubai Mall and the Mall of the Emirates. The one we visited was over a mile long from end to end. It had a massive aquarium with exotic saltwater fish. The other has indoor skiing with live penguins that you can pet. Dubai offers multiple golf courses with lush green grass that somehow survives the hard desert environment. And I haven’t even mentioned the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which reaches 2,717 feet vertically into the sky.
When Team Heaton arrived in country, the Burj Khalifa was only 80% of the way complete. We didn’t actually call ourselves that… in case you were wondering. 🙂 It was no less impressive. You could see it from… everywhere including from my hotel window. The temperature was 104% and that was mild for that time of year. The first section of the Dubai Metro, the rapid transit rail system, was only finished a couple days before we got there. We were some of the first people on the planet earth to get to ride it.
Another interesting fact about our trip is that it just happened to coincide with Ramadan – the Islamic religious holy week. The entire country was fasting from dawn to sunset. Non-Muslims were allowed to eat and drink, but not in public. If you were caught taking even just a sip of water, you could be thrown in jail.
Speaking of jail….
After a day or two of getting around town by taxi, Jeremiah couldn’t stand it any longer. He wanted his independence back, so he got his own rental. If I recall correctly it was 4 door Toyota pickup, but it might have been an SUV. Either way, he drove it like a rental. Fast and full out.
After exploring most of what the city had to offer, we decided that it would be a great idea to drive a couple hours south to the boarder of the U.A.E. and Oman… just to get our passports stamped. We didn’t know it at the time that tensions between Oman and its neighbor to the south, Yemen, were on the rise. It probably wasn’t the wisest time to start behaving like silly American teenagers. Without a second thought…. Off we went!
The endless ocean of orange drifting sand was unbelievably beautiful. At one point, I caught a glimpse of wild camels making their way across the dunes. The closer we got to Oman, the sand was displaced by jagged rocks and imposing mountains. The sun faded and a jet-black night began to hide everything except for the moon, the stars, and whatever our headlights hit.
When we finally arrived at the border, the road narrowed. Chain linked fencing with loops of razor wire flanked the streets leading up to the checking station. As we slowly approached, soldiers in camouflage uniforms began to come into view… along with their machine guns and questioning stares. Let’s just say the guards were suspicious of us. And when Jeremiah rolled down his window to explained that all we wanted was to get our passports stamped… that didn’t alleviate their concerns. We were told to park and come inside. That’s when I really started to get nervous. In hindsight, I guess I was nervous for nothing. They stamped our passports and were on our way – another two or three hours back in the opposite direction. It was probably 10pm or 11pm when Jeremiah got bored again.
Completely out of the blue, he slammed on the brakes, banged a hard right, and veers off the shoulder…. into only God knows where. There was no road. He just started driving through the desert. Greg and I were laughing and hanging on for dear life. It was hilarious for sure, but I was freaking out a little on the inside. My brain was having a hard time processing what just happened.
Then… out of the pitch black, I saw something in the distance. What is that? It’s a…. I think it’s a…. whatever it was it was approaching fast!!! I think it’s a…. A House!!! There was a house right in front of us… then another and another. They didn’t have any lights on inside the windows, so it was hard to tell if anyone lived there or not. Maybe they were abandoned long ago. Or maybe they were just a random row of sheds hanging out in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. The only thing I could think of was… what if people do live there and they come out guns a blazing? Or what if they call the police and we get locked up in an international prison for the rest of our lives? What if the US Embassy takes their sweet time in letting our families back home know that we might not be coming home ever again? My wife would kill me!
That singular moment stretched out in slow motion for what felt like an eternity, but it only took a second to snap back to reality. Jeremiah franticly cranked the steering wheel powerfully to the right, spinning the truck a hundred and eighty degrees around in the opposite direction, and we high tailed out of the danger zone.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would ever work on a congressional campaign. The notion of traveling half way across the world to visit the middle east wasn’t even a blip on my radar. There were so many unexpected, but absolutely wonderful experiences about that trip that I could have missed out on… if I would have stayed in my comfort zone. I hope this blog post inspires you to stop playing it safe, to get back out in the world and live your life courageously.
I will leave you these indelible words from the infamous Hannah Montana… “Life’s what you make it, so let’s make it rock”. I can say without a doubt that my trip to Dubai rocked. My friends Greg and Jeremiah rocked even harder.
Be adventurous and make memories of your own that will last a lifetime.
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